U.S. Pat. Nos. 4,676,343 and 4,792,018, commonly-assigned herewith, set forth systems for operator-unattended checkout with particular concern for detection of customer fraud and deterrence of the same.
In the '343 patent, an article selected for purchase has its universal product code (UPC) scanned by a code reader and the code reader output signals effect the fetching from storage of a signal indicative of a measurable characteristic of the article. The article is placed on a conveyor and led thereby into a security zone defined by inlet and outlet light curtains. In the security zone, the measurable characteristic of the selected article is measured by a sensor and the sensor provides an output signal indicative of the measurement. A comparison is made of the sensor output signal and the fetched signal and, if the comparison is favorable, the conveyor continues to move in an article acceptance sense. Should the comparison be negative, the movement of the conveyor is reversed and the article placed on the conveyor is returned to the customer.
The system thus detects and rejects customer fraud in substituting a more expensive article having diverse characteristics from those of the article scanned for UPC. Beyond the described anti-fraud facility, conveyor movement is reversed on violations of the security zone, as by efforts of a customer to reach into the security zone to substitute articles.
In the '018 patent, various security-related improvements are disclosed, one of which is the reconfiguration of the inlet light curtain to sense the size of a selected article in addition to the role of the curtain in guarding the security zone from fraudulent customer interaction. While the '343 patent contemplates article size also as a measurable article characteristic, the '018 patent discloses the capacity for providing the measured article size information store itself from the inlet light curtain. Thus, as an article is introduced into the security system, its size, as indicated in signals provided from measurement by the inlet light curtain, is storable in the system data base for security purposes. The same may be said of the weight scale in the security zone, i.e., the systems of the commonly-assigned patents may look to weight or size as the measured article characteristic, or jointly to both such security parameters.
While the commonly-assigned patents describe their systems as operator-unattended, practical implementation thereof has led to a re-characterization thereof as systems requiring limited operator assistance, vastly less than the conventional, fully operator-attended systems theretofore known. Typically, an employee is assigned to a prescribed number of checkout counters and floats therebetween as assistance is required.
One basis for the need for some operator assistance derives from article supplier activity not keyed into the security data base by the manager of the facility using the system, typically a food market supermarket. By way of example, in a promotional effort for a given article, a further article may be affixed thereto as an award for purchase of the article. This gives rise to a size characteristic which compares negatively with the stored size characteristic for the article absent its companion.
Heightened operator assistance attends the described situation, since all article rejections by the checkout system require an operator to assist in the checkout, e.g., as in bypassing the system for the rejected article. While the above example is a size discrepancy, article suppliers will at times change the weight aspect of an article, e.g., by changing a container from plastic to glass or vice versa. Weight discrepancy likewise gives rise to article rejection and need for operator assistance.
The efficacy of usage of the checkout systems of the commonly-assigned patents manifestly correlates with minimizing of operator assistance. In the described deficiencies attending security system parameters, efficacy is depleted in that operator assistance is called for repetitively and time-consumingly for each instance of the deficiency, which will occur continuously until such time as the data base is updated.